Bill Hamilton

This Russian movie has all the bells and whistles of a Hollywood blockbuster but with believable, sympathetic characters and a welcome twist to the “evil E.T.” genre. It opens with two cosmonauts returning to earth when they encounter some unknown entity outside their space capsule that aborts their mission. We then witness a female neuropsychologist in Soviet Russia being demoted for saving a patient by using a risky therapy that almost drowned him. Her case comes to the attention of a Soviet Army Colonel who thinks she would be ideal for his project. He convinces her to come with him to a remote lab/prison complex in Soviet Kazakhstan, where she meets the one cosmonaut who survived the encounter in space. He appears to be suffering from amnesia, since he cannot remember the encounter or anything else until he woke up in the lab. All he wants is to go home and be with his mother. Her knowledge of hormones leads her to believe the project leaders aren’t telling her everything, and she’s right. They show her video footage of the cosmonaut sleeping at night when a hideous reptilian alien is disgorged from the man’s stomach and starts walking around the cell. After a few hours the creature compresses itself and crawls back into the cosmonaut’s body. When he is awake the man appears to be unaware of the creature and, in fact, feels great and has unusual energy and strength. It soon becomes clear that the man cannot survive without the alien, but the psychologist is determined to find a way to separate them permanently. We gradually learn that the project leaders – and the cosmonaut – are not telling the psychologist the whole story, which leads to some truly horrifying consequences. The relationship between the cosmonaut and the alien bring a novel and satisfying element to the genre. The nonpareil special effects; washed out, ominous night scenes; superb acting; gripping script; perfectly timed editing; and all-around high production values make this movie an excellent candidate for cinema studies and Hollywood pitch meetings. Russia’s greatest film talents were involved in the production, including the director/producer Fyodor Bondarchuk, who plays the Soviet Colonel, and who is the son of the legendary director Sergei Bondarchuk.